Review: Puppeteer is more than just a LittleBigPlanet imitation

Come one, come all! Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, get to your seat, as the review is about to begin! Secure all belongings and get ready for a fantastic show: The Puppeteer!

Prepare to get a glimpse of a magical world where creatures speak, witches fly and puppets can almost do as they please. So sit back, relax and enjoy the show! Unfortunately we offer no refunds, only badges of shame. We will now present for your entertainment the most stupendous, magnificent, super-colossal extravaganza!

Drumroll please!

Act 1

The Puppeteer is probably one of the most interesting platformers I’ve played this year. It’s charming theatre setting makes it feel like the player is participating in the completion of its theatrical story.

Burger head activates the giant burger.

The side-scrolling experience has a lot in common with Media Molecule’s LittleBigPlanet and I found a lot of what I experienced in Puppeteer, was borrowed from that particular title. Sony Computer Entertainment Japan made the game their own though and its strengths are shown through its fun paper craft style characters, funny one-liners and visually appealing level depth.

Act 2

Puppeteer begins as the terrible Moon Bear King kidnaps a young boy named Kutaro who has been turned into a puppet, had his head stolen and is locked in a castle located on the moon. This doesn’t stop him from breaking free of the King’s clutches in order to reverse the spell and turn himself back to normal. How does he do that without a head, you might ask? Simple really; he uses heads he finds on his journey.

Puppeteer is more than just a LittleBigPlanet knock-off.

Early on, Kutaro will team up with a floating cat-puppet hybrid named Yin-Yang who follows Kutaro wherever he goes. Yin-Yang has a special ability that gives you access to hard to reach items. He doesn’t do this on his own though. You can control Yin-Yang by using the Playstation controller’s right stick to move him around. The trigger button makes him interact with nearby objects.

Throughout the game, heads are also used as Kutaro’s lives. He can pick up various head types like a skeleton head, spider head or even a banana head. They also each have unique magical abilities. For example, part of the game puts you in a room filled with bananas scattered across the floor. With the power of the banana head, I was able to run across the banana domain with ease (while looking incredibly silly in the process).

Kutaro gets a new head!

Kutaro can only hold up to three heads at once and when he’s injured, his head pops off and rolls away, giving you a limited amount of time to reclaim it before it disappears.

The game also literally ‘sets the stage’ as you make progress through its journey to get Kutaro’s life back. While playing, you’ll hear gasps and cheers from an invisible audience that also works as a good indicator if you’re trying to figure out what to do next.

Intermission

Ladies…gentlemen…children of all ages, behold! The bonus stages!

While progressing through levels, you’ll often see faint floating head silhouettes, indicating there is a bonus stage nearby. In order to gain access to these levels, Kutaro has to have the same head as the shadow.

As I made my way through Puppeteer, I saw one particular head that resembled a spider. Since I had my spider head on, I used its action and a giant spider crawled down the wall, grabbed Kutaro and crawled away. That’s when the curtain closed and re-opened and I was in a bonus stage. This one tasked me with bouncing on the abdomen of spiders to collect moon shards. If you collect 100 of them, you gain an additional life.

Act 4

When Kutaro takes hold of his main item, a pair of enchanted scissors, Puppeteer starts to get exciting and allows players to cut down their enemies, freeing their souls in the process.

Also, every time you possess a new item, Puppeteer trains you to use it by giving you a small task to complete. Upon receiving the scissors, you are given many ways to use them like normal cutting and sky cutting – which requires you to jump and cut, allowing you to stay in the air as long as there is something nearby to slice up.

Moon Bear King and his pet tiger.

Then there’s seam cutting, an ability that allows Kutaro to ride fabric seams like a roller coaster. The quicker you tap the square button, the faster he’ll go. It’s a really fun mechanic that the Puppeteer uses as a way of navigating Kutaro through the game’s scenes.

Final Act

Did I mention it supports the Move controller for multiplayer? Well it does and while some may think the Move controller is more of a gimmick, it really comes in handy when a lot of things are happening during certain scenes in the game.

Remember how I said you can control Yin-Yang to float around? Well if someone wants to play Puppeteer with you, you can do just that. I didn’t have anyone to play with so I tried it out on my multitasking and it seems like it could be a lot easier to have someone fly around the background, collecting moon shards for you while you navigate through the level.

When I first started playing the Puppeteer I was very skeptical. At first glance, it looks like a kid-focused, casual game. In reality, it isn’t. It’s definitely a unique experience with a fun twist on traditional 2D platformer mechanics and story. With those two unique ingredients, Puppeteer creates a great show you’ll need to watch until the very end.

Puppeteer is on PlayStation 3 and was released September 5th as a PS3 .